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I see a lot of paper on your desk.
Books full of laws.
The goal of a law is to provide
safety and justice for those for whom it was written.
Those are good laws on that paper.

But if you are just going to sit there,
doing nothing,
if you are not going to take action and
make those laws and goals a reality,
then they’re nothing but a waste of paper.

Paper is a resource – it can be used as kindling.
The goal of a fire is to provide
safety, justice, shelter, food, warmth.
Dead paper is more useful as kindling.
If you care about safety –
if you care about justice at all –
you will either act on these laws, or burn them.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Francie Lynch Dec 2023
Clothes are for wearing.
Music is for listening.
Chairs are for sitting.
Children are for loving.
Food is for eating.
Parents are for security.
Laws are for obeying.
Schools are for education.
Religion is for wonderment.
Incarceration is for miscreants.
Water is for drinking.
Trains, planes and automobiles are for travel.
*** is for many reasons.
Love and Truth are for everyone.
Life is for living.
Death is for dying.
Death is for living?
Jeremy Betts Dec 2023
Crimes gone on and on and against all humanity with a refusal to ever scrutinize
Twist the rule of law to accommodate the blatant lies they prioritize on both sides
That's the American dream, can only be seen behind closed eyes
Allowed to look but can't touch the prize, that's the hook, the bait and switch slight of hand is no surprise
A separate set of law books slipped in on the sly, guess the compromise
One for the citizen and one for the almighty enterprise, just dollar signs in their eyes
All for one and one for all, false bravado, see what happens when a nobody tries
See how quick a global problem is prioritized to keep in check a global unrest notably on the rise
Also on the rise, fear of a population turned unbiased congregation then weaponized
Who exactly are the good guys? If it's a non zero number I'd be surprised
Who would have guessed that building an enterprise on the lives of the little guys would be a possible demise?

🎼If you go into my neck of the woods prepare for a big surprise
A lone baby cries it's own lullabies through innocent eyes as innocence dies
The evil in people is all that thrives, it's never been the best of times🎼

©2023
Devil Atticman Oct 2023
For what is work?
To be complete.

What is strength?
The death of defeat.

Love, as well,
Is to rest one's feet.

Forces and their ends
Must meet.

Then I ask you,
What remains past death
A worthy edifice to seek?
A thought about the physical termination of energy in physics expanded in consideration of our own human values.
Anais Vionet Jul 2023
(a story in trochaic tetrameter)

Even a Prince must bend his knee
to the lass who has won his heart.
“Please be my bride, stay by my side
forever - tell me we shall wed.”

“My love and affections are yours,
they have never been better fed
- you are surely pleasures master,
with your rough hands and softer lips.”

“Then let us petition the clerk,
we can be wed in a fortnight!”

Sometimes love takes dismaying turns.

There are standards, some are double.
The future princess must be chaste.

The clerk asked, “Are you a ******?”

“Do you seek to entrap us, sir?”
The prince asked, his hand to dagger.

“We cannot hoodwink the law, sir.
It must be asked and answered.”

And so the clerk asked it again,
“Would you swear on your honor miss?”

“If I had a virgins honor,”
the possible, future princess said.

The high clerk sighed and sheathed his pen.

“Most honest and least virtuous
lady, the marriage cannot be.”

“So, then the law is strictly tied
to something lost in love’s first blush?”
she asked, with no show of dismay.

“My actions follow the law, miss.”
If the clerk sounded bored, he was.

The prince, however, was outraged.
and on the verge of a salvo.

The clerk feared a soliloquy.

To stall the coming storm, the clerk
said, “I believe you KNOW the King?”

“He’s my father!” The prince revealed,
to no one’s shock or great surprise.

“The King, the law - the law, the King?”
The clerk's finger turned like a wheel.

Somewhere deep in princes mind
a dim bulb lit. “To the Castle!”

The clerk smiled wryly at the lass,
who shrugged back. Love would find a way.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Salvo: “a sudden verbal or physical attack”
LeV3e Feb 2023
Our logic is round
Like the world that we stand on
Our fathers are proud
We proved to be worthy spawn

Our reasoning is cyclical
Like the seasons return on schedule
Our mothers still cynical
That love exists beyond her child

Morality makes us whole
Like a cold drink from a clean spring
But do we have a soul?
The weight of the question runs deep

You can't prove me wrong
Isn't a good enough reason to act out
And just because a song is sung
Doesn't mean I have to listen to you shout
Tolerance is a paradox, and despite our efforts to be and act freely, there are moral failings that keep us chained to the rule of Law.
Robert Ronnow Dec 2022
Across the track, a rail yard worker
big innocent bear of a guy, beer
belly, embraces his girl. She’s
a conductor, comes up to that belly,
reaches arms not quite around
his back. They separate and embrace
three times while the train prepares
for departure.
                           Across the aisle,
a mother and son. Lights out, change engines,
they play Mercy. Squeeze fingers until one
cries mercy. The son still too small
to seriously challenge his young, athletic
mother. Ask and answer questions, laugh
and cry mercy, she draws and he colors
the features.
                         Unless a society
expects its fate to be better than its past,
it will strive to make its present
immutable as possible.
Optimism is a way of exploring failure.
It says there is no law of nature
or supernatural decree preventing progress.
Nearly all failures, and all successes, are in
our future.
—Deutsch, David, The Beginning of Infinity, Viking Press, 2011.
Strangerous Aug 2022
The husband of the mother is presumed
          to be the father of the child.
We think it best that one man should be doomed
          to bear the risk the seed is wild.
Art. 184. Presumed paternity of husband

© 1993 by Jack Morris
Filomena Aug 2022
There are degrees of confinement,
And escape is not a crime.
But without a realignment,
I'm resigned to pantomime.
Psych ward poetry.
Set 3, poem 52.
Earth, you have breached the contract of life, valuing ****** while murdering the innocent and just. You are sent to Hell and destruction immediately. Every continued negligent nuisance of abuse against the saints will be answered individually with an additional thousand years alone isolated in eternal Hell.
Be thoughtful of others, or die.

And clean up after yourselves, leaving no aroma of your lowly stench in my bathrooms.

Each time these rules are violated, you lose another limb.

The Eternal
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